Social Influence

• Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group. It is a change is a person's behaviour or opinion as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
• The three types of conformity are compliance, identification and internalisation
• Compliance is when you go along with what others are doing

  • Once away from the group, behaviour and opinions will be back to normal
  • Public but not a private acceptance of the groups' behaviour and attitudes
  • Temporary behaviour change
• Identification is a moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way with the group because we value something about the group

  • Identify and change behaviour publicly to be part of the group and privately as you may still hold onto those beliefs
  • Temporary and is not maintained when individuals leave the group
• Interalisation is when a person genuinely believes and accepts a group norm

  • Public and private acceptance as the views and behaviour become part of the way they think
  • Change is permanent
  • Beliefs and behaviour are present even when not with the group
• The aim of Asch's study into conformity was to examine how social pressure from a majority could affect someone's behaviour

  • Tested conformity using a 'visual perception' task
• Procedure of Asch's study into conformity:

  • 123 males took part in a line judgement task and placed real, naïve participants in a room with 7 confederates, who agreed answers in advance
  • Real participant was always sat second to last or last
  • Each person had to say which line was most like the target line in length but the correct answer was always obvious
  • Each participant took part in 18 trials, confederates gave incorrect answers on 12 of them (critical trials)
• Findings of Asch's study into conformity:

  • 75% of the participants conformed to at least one of the critical trial and 25% never conformed
  • Used a control group with no confederates in which less than 1% gave an incorrect answer
  • He interviewed the participants after the experiment to find out they conformed and found that they went along with the group in order to fit in or were afraid they would get ridiculed
• Conclusions of Asch's study into conformity:

  • Individuals' judgements are affected by majority influence
  • Participants conformed due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in and avoid rejection
• Asch's variations after his original procedure included the group size, unanimity and the task difficulty
• Asch's variation of the group size:

  • Changed the number of confederates in the experiment from 0 to 15
• The impact of Asch's variation of group size:

  • Conformity increased to a certain point
  • As the number of confederates increased from 0 to 3, so did conformity
  • Increasing the confederates past 3 made little difference to conformity levels
• Asch's variation of unanimity:

  • Introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others
  • Sometime the disagree confederate would give the correct answer
  • Other times, another incorrect answer would be given
• The impact of Asch's variation of unanimity:

  • Conformity reduced
  • If correct answer was given, conformity dropped to 5%
  • If another incorrect answer was given, conformity dropped to 9%
• Asch's variation of task difficulty:

  • Visual perception task was made harder by making the lines similar in length
• The impact of Asch's variation of increasing the difficulty of the task:

  • Conformity increased
• Evaluation of Asch's study consisted of:

  • Ethical issues: deception
  • Artificial task: mundane realism
  • Not representative: not generalisable
• Evaluation of Asch's study: Ethical issues

  • Participants deceived as they thought it was a visual line judgement task
  • Participants couldn't have given true informed consent to take part
  • Reduces ethical credibility
• Evaluation of Asch's study: Artificial

  • Task of identifying which of three lines matched the target line is trivial
  • Task lacked mundane realism as it's not similar to everyday tasks
  • Reduces external validity as it doesn't represent how people conform in real life
• Evaluation of Asch's study: Not representative of all genders:

  • 123 males were used
  • FIndings cannot be applied to everyone as conformity rates of men and women may not be the same
  • Example of beta bias, the belief there's little different between female and male behaviour & male behaviour is the norm
  • Eagly and Carli carried out a meta analysis and found that women were more likely to conform than men
• The main two reasons why people conform is either due to normative social influence (NSI) or informational social influence (ISI)
• Informational Social Influence is based on idea on needing to be right and is a cognitive process and conforming via internalisation
• ISI usually occurs when:

  • A person is new to a situation and wants to do the right thing
  • The situation is ambiguous and you look for what is right
  • A person within the group is regarded as being an expert
• Normative Social Influence in based on the idea of needing to be liked and is a emotional process and conforming via compliance
• NSI usually occurs when:

  • You seek the approval of strangers
  • An individual is in a stressful situation and people are in need for social support
• Evaluation for the Explanation of Conformity:

  • Support for NSI comes from Asch
  • Support for ISI comes from Lucas
  • NSI doesn't affect everyone in the same way
  • Both processes are usually involved, criticising Deutsch and Gerrard's 'two process approach'
• Evaluation of NSI & ISI: NSI support from Asch

  • Participants knew the group was wrong privately but conformed to be accepted
  • We know as participants that were interviewed stated they conformed to avoid rejection
  • Supports that NSI is a valid theory as to why people conform where they want to be part of a social group and not to be right
• Evaluation of NSI & ISI: ISI support from Lucas

  • Asked student to answer maths problems and found greater conformity to incorrect answers when they were difficult rather than when they were easier
  • SHows that people conform in situations where they feel they don't know the answer
• Evaluation of NSI & ISI: NSI criticism

  • NSI doesn't affect everyone's behaviour in the same way
  • People less concerned with being liked are less affected by NSI than those who care about being liked
  • Shows desire to be liked underlies conformity for some people more than others
  • Limits the generalisability as it doesn't explain everyone's behaviour and may depend on independent factors e.g. personality
• Evaluation of NSI & ISI: Criticism of Deutsch & Gerrard's 'two-process' approach

  • Both processes are usually involved
  • Conformity reduced when there's one other dissenting participant in Asch's study which may reduced the power of NSI (due to providing social support) or reduce power of ISI (alternative source of information)
  • Not possible to be sure whether NSI or ISI is at work
  • Casts serious doubt over the view that NSI and ISI operate as two processes independently in conforming behaviour
• Conformity to social roles:

  • Social roles are the parts people play as members of social groups
  • These are accompanied with expectations that we have of what is appropriate in each behaviour + there's considerable pressure to conform to them
  • Conforming to a role is called identification (person changes public behaviour and private beliefs while in their social role)
  • People learn how to behave by observing the social role of others and conforming to their behaviour
• Legitimacy of authority


  • Suggests people are more likely to obey people who they perceive to have authority over them
  • If authority figures are seen as legitimate, they are granted with the power to punish others
  • People are willing to give up some independence and hand over control to those they trust to exercise their authority appropriately
  • Can be destructive - behave ways that are cruel + callous
  • Milgram: experimenter used prods to order participants to beave against their conscience
• Agentic state 


  Mental state where an individual feels no personal responsibility over their behaviour as they believe themselves to be acting for an authority figure (as an agent)

  • An individual gives up their free will by handing responsibility to an authority figure, freeing them from the demands of their conscience
  • Experience high anxiety as they know what they're doing is wrong but feel powerless to disobey the authority figure
  • Aspects of a situation allowing an agent to ignore damaging effects of their behaviour - binding factors
• Aim of the Strange Situation

  • Observe key attachment behaviour as a means of assessing the quality of a child's attachment
  • Was a controlled observation designed to measure of security of attachment a child displays towards a caregiver using a two way mirror
• Key attachment behaviours in the Strange Situation

  • Proximity seeking
  • Exploration and secure base behaviour
  • Stranger anxiety
  • Separation anxiety
  • Response to reunion
• 3 types of attachment

  • Secure attachment (B)
  • Insecure Avoidant (A)
  • Insecure Resistant (C)